Friday, March 18, 2011

Disposable email addresses is one good way to fight spam. A typical disposable or temporary email service allows you to generate random email ids that remain active usually for a few minutes to a few hours. The idea is to set up temporary email addresses for one-time-use requirements, such as signing up on some website, or for contacts you do not plan to correspond to in future. After the email address expires, any mail send to that address is lost. This way, no one can compromise the address or abuse it.

Traditional disposable email address services give no long term ownership and control over a disposable address - they expire after which they become available for anyone to use. 33Mail is a new disposable email service that seeks to solve this problem by allowing users to have their own personal disposable email address service.

When you sign up for 33mail you get an email address of the form @username.33mail.com, instead of username@33mail.com like regular email addresses do. You are free to create and add any prefix before @username.33mail.com and use it as temporary email ids. Here you retain control and ownership over @username.33mail.com – it’s yours.

Another thing is that all emails sent to whatever@username.33mail.com are forwarded to your actual email address, which may be Gmail or Hotmail or your company email. So you don’t have to login or visit your 33mail inbox to read them. When you are done with an email address and want to block it, simply click the unsubscribe link that they send out with every email from 33mail.

You can also manage your aliases from your 33mail dashboard.

Free 33mail users are allowed 10 MB of bandwidth per month. That doesn't sound much but emails cost very little in terms of bytes sent and according to 33mail, this should allow you to receive about 500 mails each month. Premium accounts, which cost $12 per year, comes with five times the bandwidth. Additionally, premium users can add their own domains and create aliases from it.

33mail also gives users (of selected countries) an easy way to convert their free accounts to premium – just refer 5 friends and get 1 year premium subscription at no cost.